Currently viewing the tag: "authorship controversy"

Shakespeare Didn’t Have the Internet: Oh Noes!

By On 02/11/2011 · 11 Comments

Thank you, John Orloff, for another history lesson:

There’s no Internet in 1600. He had no library. No books. There were no public libraries. You cannot write about 16th century law accurately because you’re gifted. You can only do that because you understand 16th century law. I just don’t believe the genius theory.

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How Shakespeare Could Write Shakespeare

By On 31/10/2011 · 16 Comments

Or, as my original title had it, “Shakespeare as Usual”:

My op-ed in The Montreal Gazette, responding to Oxfordian Keir Cutler’s piece published last Thursday.

Here’s how it starts:

I don’t think Keir Cutler (“There is method in this madness,” Opinion, Oct. 27) and others who believe Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare are certifiably mad. […]

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Shakespearean Mythbusting I: The Fantasy of the Unsurpassed Vocabulary

By On 23/10/2011 · 29 Comments

As I argued in a post last week, academic Shakespeareans need to confront those who make it their mission to convince the public that Shakespeare didn’t write the plays Shakespeare wrote. We can’t afford to ignore these claims, lest we appear scared, indifferent, or silently consenting. But unlike some of my colleagues, I think […]

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Enough Already

By On 18/10/2011 · 166 Comments

For the longest time, academic Shakespeare specialists have simply ignored the so-called authorship controversy. In the face of a steady stream of books proposing one supposed “real Shakespeare” after another, we in the academy have largely shrugged and turned back to the kind of work we consider important, relevant, and worthwhile; and most of that […]

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People Being Stupid About Shakespeare II

By On 25/06/2011 · 37 Comments

If you spend your life working on Shakespeare, sooner or later someone’s going to pop the question: “Did he really write the plays?”

If you are a serious, textual-studies minded Shakespearean, you might respond with something along these lines: “Well. Probably not all of them on his own. He only collaborated on 1 Henry VI, and […]

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